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Feb 07, 2010

Manny rated it:

A fantastic book! I have not come across anyone, not even Steven Pinker, who does such a good job of showing you how exciting linguistics can be. His bold and unconventional history of the English language was full of ideas I'd never seen before, but which made excellent sense. And, before I get into the review proper, a contrite apology to Jordan. She gave it to me six months ago as a birthday present, and somehow I didn't open it until last week. Well, Jordan, thank you, and I'll try to be mor More...

29 comments like (44 people liked it)

Feb 16, 2009

Terence rated it:

This is an extraordinarily delightful little book that highlights some of English's lesser known idiosyncrasies because, as the author notes, English is not just a collection of words, nor is its genius an markedly unusual openness to new vocabulary.

I first encountered John McWhorter with his book The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language Paperback, which traced the evolution of languages from a "first language" and which is also highly recommended. (Actually, havi More...

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

Mar 01, 2009

Michael rated it:

John McWhorter has done it again! For those who love language, there is no author better to educate and entertain on all matters linguistic. In the current work, he proves that Celtic grammatical structures have given English its "meaningless do" (as in "Do you know what I mean?") and its normative progressive present tense (as in "I am writing" rather than the more usual in other Germanic languages "I write"). He, in fact, rather belabors the point in the More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 19, 2009

Sandy rated it:

Recommended by a blogger at the Ann Arbor library, and rightly so - McWhorter is a funny writer and a historical linguist. I'm a little shocked at how well he writes, given the fact that he studies linguistics, in fact. Anthropologists in general do not write well for the general reader (with the exception of Robert Sapolsky, whom I adore, and Kent Flannery, who has written a few truly funny paragraphs that are stuck in the middle of boring-to-anyone-outside-the-field archaeological monographs). More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 09, 2010

Lavinia rated it:

Never thought Linguistics can be so much fun! Too many details to discuss. But if you ever wondered why, for instance, "you" has the same form for both singular and plural, why we say "aren't I" instead of the more logical "amn't I", why we use the meaningless "do" or "they" as a singular pronoun instead of he/she when the gender is not clear, you might get some answers or at least accept the fact that, in the author's own words, "shitte hap More...

8 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 22, 2009

Angela rated it:

The vast majority of linguistics books for the mass market are books about the history of words. If you pick up a typical history of the English language, you will learn about words we got from the Vikings, words we got from the French, words we got from the colonial era...with very little information about the structure of the English language itself. While these books are full of fun factoids--did you know shampoo comes from Hindi?--they never get to the heart of what makes language fascinat More...

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Feb 12, 2012

Лорче rated it:

I am not an expert, but I did major in Linguistics in college. I found McWhorter's arguments horribly oversimplified and tedious to read. I'm glad that he is putting linguistic scholarship out there for the general public, but someone with even a rudimentary knowledge (or even a grammar or history nerd) would know.

Being familiar with some of the counter-arguments he suggests, I can say that he presents them in a manner intended to make them appear somewhat foolish, rather than addressi More...

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Oct 22, 2011

Joe rated it:

John McWhorter's Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue is one of the most interesting books about the English language that I have read. That's saying a lot since books about the English language is all I seem to read. I don't review them enough since they're usually textbooks (fun!), but Tongue definitely deserves a review, even if it's just me telling you to go out and buy it.

Go out and buy Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter.

Tongue attempts to answer a few questions More...

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Jul 23, 2011

SA rated it:

I really enjoyed this. The main thrust of McWhorter's argument--that the shift from Old English to Middle and then Modern English resulted in a grammatical shift affected by the influence of the Brythonic (Welsh, Cornish, Pictish) languages--is one that I already believed based on my own Welsh study in university. I guess I was mostly surprised that it was not a largely accepted argument among linguists, not being myself a professional or academic linguist. But for all that I found his case comp More...

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Jul 13, 2011

Maria rated it:

While written in an entertaining and humorous tone, the author belabors a few points a little too much for my taste. He spends almost 70 pages establishing why he is unique among all linguists because of his belief that English has been influenced by Celtic languages. It really could have been written in half the length but he seems to enjoy his own voice.

There are multiple examples provided to support his theories, & he has made this accessible to non-academics, but his tone of " More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 22, 2011

Lauren rated it:

This was a fun book--he has a good sense of humor and makes things clear for laymen. Among other things, he gives his arguments for why he believes that the Celts influenced our vocabulary and why he believes the Vikings simplified our grammar (not intentionally, of course).

One of the first things I used to tell my students in Freshman English as that language rules are simply conventions. Of course, I explained that because they WERE the conventions, we had to learn to follow them i More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Mar 19, 2011

Nicholas rated it:

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue is a short book (less than 200 pages), looking at grammar. McWhorter makes five main points, one of which was completely new and intriguing to me.

1) That the '-ing' present progressive and 'do' constructions in English come from Celtic languages. I had twigged to the former while dabbling in Irish last year; but it seems that both Welsh and Cornish also use the verb 'do' in the equivalent of questions and negatives - Do you agree? I don't agree. McWhorter More...

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Jul 07, 2010

JP added it

Well written in a jokey style. Written for the layman, but much of what he presents is familiar to someone who know some linguistics. McWhorter, a prof at Berkeley, put forth his theory that English, despite having very few Celtic words other than place names in its lexicon, was strongly influenced by a Celtic substratum. A small group of Anglo-Saxon invaders foisted there language on a much larger Celtic-speaking population who altered the orginial language. The evidence for this comes in th More...

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Jun 22, 2010

Gary rated it:

In Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, it seems Mr. McWhorter is enjoying himself. While this is usually indicative of an author’s appreciation for his subject and his ability to impart his knowledge of that subject to his audience, Mr. McWhorter has another motive at play. He seems, at times, to enjoy bringing an unorthodox grammar history to the reader, but even more so, he revels in such unorthodoxy’s seeming requisite jabs at fellow critics whose ideas he’s undermining and whose conservative lin More...

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Feb 07, 2010

Georg rated it:

A very interesting book with some new theories about the development of the English language from its Germanic roots. I like his comparisons of the members of the “gang” and even more since I am familiar with two of them (ok, one and a half). McWhorter shows without any prejudice that not only all human beings are equal but also all languages though they are very different. It’s an interesting point that a language with an “easy” grammar might be a bigger challenge for the speaker and that the E More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2010

David rated it:

I read McWhorter's "The Power of Babel" a few years ago and thought it was terrific. His subsequent effort, "Doing our own Thing", was a major disappointment - self-indulgent, undisciplined, and essentially pointless. So I would have skipped this one (a cover blurb that squeezes the chestnuts "rollicking tour" and "rousing celebration" into the same sentence is generally not a good sign). Did I really need reassurance from yet another linguist that it's OK More...

20 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 29, 2009

Barry rated it:

I like the way McWhorter thinks and I really enjoy the material. My lower than expected review rating stems from the limited areas he covers.
He addresses the "do" and "ing" of English thoroughly, so thoroughly that it felt like the 400 Blows! I got to feeling "enough already!" (which is not an English construction).
Instead of beating the Celts to death over and over, I would have liked an analysis of other situations where large numbers of non-Englis More...

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Sep 13, 2009

Erik rated it:

It may be hard to imagine an untold history of our mother tongue, but McWhorter – a favorite linguist of mine since The Power of Babel and Word on the Street – has managed to discover a new, untrod path using his powers of academic detective-work which leads to a highly provocative and little-known thesis that the deepest roots of English lie not in Anglo-Saxon, as traditionally believed, but through the earliest forms of Old Celtic, whose descendants include modern Welsh. His proof is predicate More...

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Jun 22, 2009

Mahala rated it:

Six assertions of unexplained significance are belabored into the first three repetitious soporific chapters(literally--1st & last book in all my years that put me to sleep within a page time after time):

1. Most linguists study individual languages & are ignorant of others.
2. This ignorance causes them to exceptionalize and mistake the reasons for changes in the English language.
3. John McWhorter aloneable to synthesis research and theory about all languages to discern More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 04, 2009

Tripp rated it:

As ways to fill your free time online, Bloggingheads.tv is one of the better choices. If you are unfamiliar, each show brings together two people, often on opposite or conflicting sides of an issue, to talk for about an hour using computer video cameras and telephones. Unlike TV, the format is given to long form, loose conversations, which means it isn't great for soundbites or quick watching, but it can be an engaging thought-provoking listen.

One of the great benefits of the series More...

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Apr 13, 2011

Caitlin rated it:

Every time I tried to explain to someone that I was reading a linguistics book about the history of English, their eyes would kind of glaze over and they would nod in a half-interested way. Too bad, because this book was great fun. McWhorter makes linguistics interesting and accessible to the average reader, and he adds a lot of humor to the mix to keep the book light. The book examines the roots of the unique nature of the English language, including the influence of Celtic languages on our gra More...

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Sep 21, 2010

Alexis rated it:

An interesting read. McWhorter obviously has pet interests in linguistic history--interests which his readers may not always share (see, e.g., his obsession with the moderately intriguing, but not necessarily fascinating 'meaningless do'). Still, he makes seemingly logical arguments for the influence of Celtic languages on English grammar, the "strip down" of the language as a result of the Vikings, and the possibility that Proto-German finds many of its roots in Phoenician.
More...

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Sep 08, 2010

Kathrina rated it:

Well, apparently there's a lot more to John McWhorter than that he just happens to be the guy that wrote this book. I guess once you've created a reputation as an esteemed, literate, intellectual African-American schooled in serious linguistics research, people will start throwing you in front of a camera and asking what you think about Obama and what your politics are (social conservatism). Of course I had to watch a few, and couldn't get beyond the fact that his upper lip absolutely does not m More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 02, 2011

Becky rated it:

While I find the subject of this book very interesting, the author's tone and style are extraordinarily grating. He can't make a point but once, and has to hammer it home over and over again, in the most condescending language possible. He whines and bitches his way through his explanations: "The Welsh! The Cornish! Arrg! My colleagues are idiots!!" "Viking pillaging of the English tongue! just LOOK at the geography, you morons!" Then he takes a really random break in his More...

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Feb 26, 2010

Kelley rated it:

I really really wanted to enjoy this book more than I did. I love words and think I am a pretty good grammarian, but this book seems to be more of a one sided argument than a history of English.

McWhorter is an entertaining writer; no question about that. But he seems to have an ax to grind with other linguists that do not agree that English was heavily influenced by Welsh, Cornish, and Celtic languages after the Vikings brought their version of the Germanic language to Britain. If More...

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Jan 09, 2011

Keith rated it:

McWhorter describes the grammatical evolution of the English language, arguing that it is mostly the result of encounters with speakers of other languages in the British Isles. English acquired certain constructs that are relatively rare in the world's languages except in Celtic languages spoken by the early inhabitants of Britain, hence this is probably how they came into English. And successive waves of Viking invaders/immigrants who spoke other Germanic tongues had trouble picking up some of More...

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Mar 04, 2010

Rodhilton rated it:

"Our Magnificant Bastard Tongue" is a book by linguist John H. McWhorter about the formation of the English language. McWhorter takes the reader on a tour through the various influences for English, focusing not only on the words that fill our vocabulary, but on the changing rules of the grammar as well.

One of the most interesting things I learned from this book is just how stupid and arbitrary a lot of our rules for grammar are. Ending sentences in prepositions, using " More...

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Dec 14, 2008

Chad rated it:

I think I'd probably give this a 3 and a half star rating if I could. I enjoyed the central thesis of the book, but McWhorter goes off on some highly repetitive rants and gets a little bit more technical than I'd like in a few places. The book is at its best when he's sharing anecdotal evidence that supports his main idea.

The main idea is this: English was born from a family of Germanic languages which include German, Swiss, Dutch, and the many Scandinavean languages. The problem, More...

1 comment like

Jul 27, 2011

Jason rated it:

Sort of a sequel to The Power of Babel, this is an interesting work about historical English linguistics. It's also an extended argument for the importance of the Celts and the Vikings in shaping the grammar of English, two groups that are often only given credit among linguists for supplying a variety of place names and loan words. McWhorter's theory is that these two groups caused the language to change and develop by learning it as a second langauge through a process of creolization. McWhorte More...

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Jan 06, 2009

Laura rated it:

I wore my linguist hat while reading this, though I admit I don't know a lot about historical linguistics, so there could be decent arguments to make against McWhorter's thesis that English syntax developed the way it did through contact with Phoenician, then Celtic, then Norse. I don't know the extent to which this theory is accepted or even how much it's been discussed in the community.

All the same - I was really happy to see him discussing syntactic change at all. He's right that More...

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